Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 22:48:43 +0200
From: Markus Stumptner
Subject: COMP: Grigsby's Pacific War (long)
Basically, GPW has weekly turns, and you get to give orders and a target hex
to task forces (such as air combat, surface combat, bombardment, transport,
cargo). You can also specify whether a task force should remain at the
target at the end of the turn, return, or return according to the commander's
judgment. Commanders are rated for land/air/sea combat ability and
aggressiveness - not a bad touch, but of course, you'll never see a Ghormley
in charge of SouthPac HQ if you know all along he's not the right man for the
job. For air units (carrier or land based) you specify a priority type
target (port attack, task force, land units, supply, airfield, factories --
I'm not quite sure if that list is too long, it's been a while). The problem
here is that if you choose one, most of the others will be ignored. A unit
that has been ordered to attack task forces that appear at base X will ignore
ships sitting defenselessly in port at base X throughout the turn, even if no
task forces ever show up.
Movement
========
Movement on land is dot-to-dot (called "base-to-base"), which means that,
e.g., in all of Burma there are exactly two locations to put troops, Rangoon
and Mandalay, and Imphal is the automatic next station if you lose Mandalay.
Naval movement uses a hexmap, BUT the paths used are fixed! That means a
task force going from Noumea to Guadalcanal will always move along the same
hexes, and you can't do anything about it. These paths usually follow the
hexgrid, i.e., you move straight in one direction, then turn 60 degrees and
move straight to your target. Due to this L-shape, quite often you will find
your carriers hugging the coast to be as close to enemy air bases as
possible. You can avoid having your tankers, supply ships and troop
transports straying into the middle of the Japanese-held Marshall islands by
explicitly sending them off to Fiji and from there to Pearl Harbor or
Australia (if you forget one, boom), but you have no such control over a
carrier TF that is close enough to reach its target in one turn. Btw, all
bases that can be used in the game are fixed from the beginning. (Many start
small, though, and you can enlarge them with engineers, so this is not
totally brainless.)
Movement is not simultaneous, which is supposed to help clarity (?!) but
doesn't and results in all kinds of weird effects when task forces meet,
e.g., unescorted transports slipping through straits which are guarded by a
50-ship task force, or task forces not seeing each other since one sails past
another which has already reached its target.
There is a fairly detailed supply system, and you can create your own supply
TFs. However, there is also a "get transport" function that will teleport
ships from all over the map to where you want them. This is what you usually
use since it's so complicated to assemble taskforces and tell them what you
want from them.
Combat
======
The combat system has all sorts of weird occurrences. If you have fighters
and dive bombers at a base, in many cases the fighters alone will attack, and
try machinegunning the ships in a task force. Apparently even slightly
damaged ships can sink after battles, but you're never told about it. Gives
new meaning to the phrase "losing a carrier" (which happened to me on
occasion. "What, Admiral Nimitz, we didn't tell you about the sinking of the
Lexington when you drew up the plans for Midway?")
Land combat can only occur between units at the same base. It gives you the
opportunity to experience a division on a (small) island chasing 5 unsupplied
enemy squads around for two months. You also have to activate it every turn
so it will at least keep chasing. For large units, it appears to work OK
(given the restriction that due to the point-based movement it is effectively
a morale-, supply-, and leader-rating-affected slugfest).
Surface combat is resolved in terms of individual salvoes (!). This is done
by lining the two fleets up in order of size (range and surprise are
determined randomly though influenced by the admirals), and then firing left
to right at the enemy ships left to right. This means there are hardly any
light ship losses as the heavies catch everything (also it appears as if
Japanese torpedoes are not very effective at night). This also takes a long
time to watch (air-to-air combat is similar). If you lower the display
detail level to save time, you don't get to see which ships and plane types
were involved in the combat. The Japanese torpedo weakness in surface combat
is counterbalanced by overrating the effectiveness of torpedoes carried by
Bettys. (The Bettys thus are the most effective carrier killers. What's the
good of rating planes in five dimensions if this is what comes out of it??)
Detail
======
The game has incredible amounts of detail, most of it useless because the
game procedures are too coarse or skewed to handle it correctly. Land unit
size is given in squads and individual tanks and guns (ok, typical Grigsby),
and they are rated in supply and quality. Air units count individual planes
and are rated for pilot quality. Unfortunately, airfields come in five
sizes, air units grow to fit those airfields and can't be split later, and
*any* infusion of new pilots will lower quality. Thus, the favorite way to
create elite units by making them overstrength (put a unit from a large
airfield on a small one). When you use the unit in combat, no replacements
will be assigned for losses (since the unit is too big), but all the pilots
benefit from the experience (even those who supposedly can't fly because
their planes don't fit on the airfield). The same philosophy (make a unit
too big so it won't get replacements and let it shrink in combat while
gaining experience) also produces the best land units.
PBEM possibility
================
The basic capability to exchange status files is there. Only one player can
watch the turn progress - no surprise. However, the battle summaries that
can be looked at after the turn are extremely thin on information *and* do
not agree with the actual results you get to see if you watch the battles
zipping by. (You also don't get any reports of fighter sweeps that may have
resulted in dozens of lost planes). The player who can't watch the actual
turn both loses out on some of the fun and the information.
Interface
=========
The interface is the worst part. You can use a mouse, but the interface is
designed to fight against the mouse every inch of the way. I've never seen a
sequence of mouseclicks as convoluted as that needed to move a ship from one
taskforce to another. And you need to click left or right in certain
alternating patterns. Miss one and you start again. Same for most other
functions.
The map does not show any place names. You have to change modes to look at
air, land, naval units, and task forces on the map, and there is no way to
look at a base and see all units there at once. I've heard many people
complain that the information contained in the game is overwhelming. It
isn't (compared to V4V, for example). It's just presented in a painfully bad
manner. This is a program that makes you work for finding out things.
There are also some things you can't find out. For example, the matter of
the so-called preparation points. Their level is crucial in determining the
effectiveness of carrier air strikes. However, they are assigned to task
forces *after* you start execution of the turn so you can't look at them, and
the manual doesn't really describe the way they are computed (nor mention
that they are that important). One of the earlier patches to the game came
with a 30-page "hint file" -- basically 30 pages of manual errata and
omissions. I guess that sums it up nicely.
Finally, I've already noted the problem of slow display vs missing
information. There are situations where you don't have a choice anyway.
During movement, the display jumps all over the map depending on where the
action goes. In the supply phase (when submarine combat takes place) this is
especially amusing, since you're expected to look at the supply convoy routes
that briefly flash across the screen to find out where to place your subs. :-)
At the bottom of the screen, you are given the convoy's target location.
This display puzzled me for a long time, until I noticed that the message
displayed always corresponded to the previous map section instead of the one
shown together with the message!
Btw, I know people who really have fun playing this game, or at least claim
it. The main requirement is that you must not care much for historicity or
mind that you're being screwed by a program and game that was obviously too
much for its designer in the time he had available. I've gone back to
Pacific War.
Markus